Friday, February 15, 2013

2012/13 Panini Prizm Basketball Box Break Recap And Review

Often new releases require a year or two to work out the
kinks. 2012/13 Panini Prizm Basketball is one of those rare releases that gets
it right the first time out the gate.With a simple configuration and low number of inserts, all that is left
is to concentrate on the base cards, which in this case are spectacular. It is
difficult to look at these stunning cards and find fault. The truth is, even
without the Prizm parallels, this set of cards works on it’s own merit. But add
the soaring secondary market values of the Gold Border cards and you have the
makings of one the best card releases of the year, Basketball or any other
sport.

Though on the high end of the category from a cost
standpoint, we classify Panini Prizm as trading cards.Each box contains 20 - 6 card packs
with a promise of 2 autographs, 2 Prizms and 2 Inserts in every box.

Here are some of the cards we pulled.

Base Set

Blake Griffin, front and back

Derrick Rose, Dirk Nowitzki, Kevin Durant

Patrick Ewing, Jerry West, Dennis Rodman

Anthony Davis, Bradley Beal, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist

Prizm Parallels

Ray Allen, Jason Thompson, Manu Ginobili

Inserts

Downtown Bound

Kobe Bryant

Finalists

LeBron James

USA Basketball Team

Kobe Bryant

This year in all of the Panini Basketball releases there
will be a 5 card bonus pack top loaded in each box.All cards will be part of the Kobe Bryant Anthology and
cover his entire career with the Lakers. Here are the cards from our pack.

Card 2, front and back, Card 124

Card 60, Card 190, Card 112

The Hits

Kim English Auto, Austin Rivers Auto

Overall Look

Pictures of these base cards just don’t do them
justice.Te cards appear to be
debossed and etched on the front without any indication of that on the surface
or the backs of these cards.Whether this is accomplished by clear coating the surface or through clever
shading makes no difference to the collector because either way the end product
is stunning.

Quality and Variety of Players

The 300 player base set offers a really good mix of current
and retired players. 100 selected players for autographs and 4 insert sets that
range from 12 cards to 38, all the makings for a tight, complete
checklist.Even the green border
cards found in retail are doing well.

Do the hits hold up?

Plenty of veteran, rookie and retired stars autos will make
most collectors very happy.The
hobby exclusive Gold border parallels #/10 have to be considered hits too with
Kyrie Irving version going for about $3,600 on the secondary market.

Will you want to collect them all?

Yes... yes you will.And as a side note just incase the folks at Panini see this review.
PLEASE do not play with the configuration of this product in the future.Yes there is room to add Black 1/1s,
but that is it.